


cut a little hole in your bed for me

by joeri



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Injury, Grinding, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kissing, Loss of Virginity, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 11:23:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20425163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/joeri
Summary: felix and sylvain both learn: secrets come out eventually.





	cut a little hole in your bed for me

**Author's Note:**

> eh it doesnt seem graphic enough for the explicit tag
> 
> if it bares mentioning, this has spoilers for felix back story stuff, tragedy of duscur, i mention his reason for hating dimitri etc.
> 
> also: i can and will get emotional abt sylvain jose gautier turning to terrible methods to cover his emotions. he and felix are _both_ repressed but he puts on a smile and it makes me so sad

Felix’s never been one to care much for his nobility, positively or negatively. It’s simply the fact of the matter: he is the eventual Duke. Comparatively at least when it comes to housing, Felix was not terribly picky on the placement. Certain nobles who won’t be named (rhymes with Shmerdinand and Florenz) kicked up something of a fuss to ensure all of their prestigious bedding came with them. Felix was different.

He did have one thing he required, though. One thing he had to bring with him: his old pillowcase. It’d belonged to Sylvain once in a time long forgotten.

There was no need to bring a set of sheets worth tens of thousands of gold. This was _his_ guilty pleasure.

Best part of it all was that no one had to know. Not a soul was wise to the way Felix laid himself to sleep at night, nose nuzzled into the fabric of one of Sylvain’s old blouses all buttoned up around his goose-feather pillow. Maybe he’s deluded himself into thinking it wasn’t a ‘weird crush thing’ anymore. It’s merely home and comfortable. It smacks of security when paired with the dagger beneath his bottom pillow. There’s no use for either of them: no murderers are going to find their way into his bedroom tonight and neither will Sylvain Jose Gautier.

Not anymore, at least.

Felix isn’t even sure why these thoughts cross his mind on this particular night. It feels like frustration until it feels like fate—until his bedroom door clicks itself open and allows the night air to whistle in. His eyes widen to the size of fish bowls all in silence. The moon filtering through his blinds in strips and ribbons is the only illumination upon this mysterious figure’s face. The flaming hair like fire and the quickness with which he tip-toes is too familiar.

Felix has no need to draw his dagger, though he’s tempted just to teach this man a lesson.

Before he can move, Sylvain is in his bed. He’s pulled the covers apart and found the spot where his body fits in just right. It almost makes Felix hate himself, the fact that with a king sized bed he finds himself comfiest in the corner up against the bedroom wall. It’s like he _let_ this happen.

A rock drops into Felix’s stomach. Sylvain is in his bed. _Sylvain could see the blouse._

There was no doubt about it, Felix was always going to ask what the _fuck_ Sylvain was doing here, but now he’s a tad more… enthusiastic.

Both of his hands knock the soul and wind out of Sylvain’s chest, shoving him to the floor with a clumsy thud that could’ve—_should’ve_ woken up all of Garreg Mach.

“Wah! _Hey!_ Felix, it’s me! Don’t attack me!”

He’s shouting. It’s fuck knows how late o’clock and he’s _shouting_.

“What are you doing in here?” Felix snaps, whisper-yelling as venomously as he can manage it while his hands fumble restlessly to switch his bottom pillow with the blouse enveloped one.

That’s when his fingers slice across the blade. It catches the tip of his palm too. Felix sucks in a breath, his body stilling. His eyes clench up tight. Oh, and _now he’s bleeding_.

This is all in deep darkness.

His noise of agony comes off like a sigh, like something made in rage and so Sylvain doesn’t seem privy, Felix notes, not sure if that’s better or worse.

Either way, he’s clenching his hand now. His hand feels slick like the blood is everywhere and Felix rolls his eyes in pain. He can’t see the damage or assess it’s gravity. If only Sylvain could leave, Felix would avoid total embarrassment.

“I just uh… y’know, wanted a sleepover like the good ol’ days, like when we were kids?”

“Sylvain,” hisses Felix, applying ample pressure to his fingers. “Don’t come into my room without knocking. Get out.”

“Aww, c’mon,” he grouses soft, criss-crossing his legs down on Felix’s floor; a pattern of moonlit lines morphing across his face give light to his cherry-lipped pout. “I came all this way, and in my pajamas no less!”

This blood will stain the bed. This blood will stain _the shirt_. Felix is shaking with endless wrath.

“Look how much I care. _Get out_.”

There’s a tremble in his voice he can’t disguise. Call it the gash in his fingers. Sylvain scoots a little closer.

“Wait a minute, were you having a nightmare, Felix?” _Like you used to have_, he doesn’t say but Felix can assuredly hear it omitted.

They all did after the Tragedy of Duscur. They all suffered long for what they had saw. Felix especially had turned from a kinder boy to something of a cynic, a constant question over whether goodness exists in the world after all.

If goodness was dying and being called honorable for it, Felix rejected it. Glenn should’ve meant more than that. If goodness was fighting for your loved ones, for your country and savagely cutting down all that could ever harm you, Felix rejected it. He felt nothing but pity for that boar prince and his ideals of justice.

Sylvain was hurt just the same. Sylvain coped in his own way and Felix in his. They never drifted apart but the nature of their friendship surely shifted from from the dynamic they’d once had together. Never again would Felix cry and run to his friend. He couldn’t afford that kind of weakness. He could only stand to be strong for strength’s sake, to keep himself alive and to keep his family and friends alive. Because the goddess above he scarcely believed in knew that they would throw themselves to the fire just to mark themselves a dutiful knight, and he’d sooner die than see them martyr themselves like that for the dead, or for a goddess that gave them naught but tools for war: the crests themselves and not much else.

The nightmares were consistent and as Felix transformed from who he’d been as a child into who he supposes he’d been destined to become, he stopped asking Sylvain for help.

Felix could still see the horrid scenes of Dimitri slaughtering a dozen men, the face of a demented executioner bared for all to see.

_We all suffered_, he thought bitterly as a child, _but it’s up to us to not lose our minds over it_.

He couldn’t rely on Sylvain. He couldn’t rely on anyone without breaking their backs, so Felix’s bones grew back stronger and he resisted the temptation to melt down and find an easier peace.

Those words Sylvain spoke brought so much back to his head.

Felix shuts both of his eyes and tries to respond but it’s been too long of a pause at this point and Sylvain scrabbles back up to the bed with an earnestness almost unlike him.

“You know I won’t tell anyone,” he reassures, as if he knows the song and dance already, knows the way Felix feels about his own vulnerability. “You can talk to me about it. I still get dreams like that, myself.”

“That’s not—”

Felix realizes he really can’t speak when he tries to only to sound like a dying fish. The words slur and gasp themselves out and he struggles to force them out.

“Shhhh,” Sylvain murmurs. “I promise it’s—”

“Idiot, would you _stop talking_ and let me finish?”

Making those sounds takes so much effort it strains the back of his throat. Felix breathes in and out, wondering why it’s hard to do such a simple task. It’s probably the pain. Maybe he should do something about it. Maybe he should tell the truth.

It comes out anyways without him really meaning to. “I’m bleeding.”

“Wait, what?”

Sylvain tears the covers off without question.

“I’m bleeding,” Felix reiterates, somewhat unbothered by the way Sylvain’s hands begin to pat down his body as if searching for the source of the wound in question.

Sylvain finds the tension in Felix’s forearms, putting two and two together more than likely and pulling himself back.

“What happened to your hands?” he says.

“I cut my hand,” Felix says. “Help me get it taken care of.”

“I’ve got this,” huffs Sylvain, snatching the pillowcase off of the nearest pillow only to tie it up nice and tight around the meat of Felix’s palm, staunching as much of the blood as he can manage for now.

It’ll do until they’re able to get him to the infirmary. Thankfully it’s not Sylvain’s blouse. It’s one of the pillowcases from Sylvain’s side of the bed.

“C’mon, let’s get you up.”

They’re both standing now, and Felix says predictably, “I don’t want to go to the infirmary.”

“Eh? Felix, you’re bleeding all over the place. Hell, let’s get a good look at how much it’s everywhere.”

Sylvain lights the oil lamp in the corner and Felix can’t catch him quick enough to stop him from doing so, so now this room’s alight with a candlelit glow and Felix is covered in blood from his wrist to his stomach.

His bed looks like a battlefield.

“Shit,” says Felix.

“How’d this even happen?”

The question comes out so clearly and Felix can’t fortune a reasonable response. There’s so many easy ones out there: _I thought you were a dangerous stranger and so I reached for my blade_. Instead, Felix struggles to answer without mumbling in incoherence and Sylvain’s face molts into something ugly and sad.

“Hey… Felix,” he says. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he continues and Felix isn’t sure he understands what Sylvain means.

“What do you mean? It was just an accident.”

Sylvain smiles. He rubs the back of his neck and pointedly avoids touching eyes. His eyeline plays with the flicker of the fire and Felix pulls his dark hair over one of his shoulders.

“Sometimes this kind of stuff sneaks up on you. It feels like an accident, but one day you think it’s the only way that you can make the thoughts go away.”

Felix squints and holds his own hand to his chest. The wet blood is colder now as it meets with his skin and he shivers at it, and shivers at Sylvain’s implications.

“Hold on, do you think I… did this on purpose?”

“I don’t think anything, Felix,” Sylvain says.

“No, that’s not what you’re saying.”

“Who knows,” quips Sylvain in a shrug. “I just want you to be safe and know you can talk to me.”

“Do _you_ know that you can talk to _me_?” Felix asks and Sylvain does a remarkably terrible job at smiling at the wall in response. “This was an accident, I swear. But what you’re thinking… what you’re saying makes it sound like you’ve…”

“How is this an accident, Felix? Do you just keep a knife in your bed?”

“I _do_,” argues Felix. “And if I were trying to do that, why would I do it in such a way as to hinder myself in battle? There’s plenty of less damaging areas. If you want honesty from me, don’t act like you’re not a liar yourself. You never told me you…”

He doesn’t say it, of course. It’s a dirty thing that people don’t speak about. It’s a thing that people are ashamed of. It’s a secret to keep and a burden that’s placed on the shoulders of anyone who knows. That’s how people see it. That’s the face that Sylvain makes when he hides his hands behind his back and shifts uncomfortably on his toes. His smile’s weak enough to shatter in the wind.

Felix frowns.

“Why did you come to my room tonight?”

Sylvain shrugs unaffectedly. The dancing light of the candle plays tricks on the many expressions Sylvain wears in vain.

“Wanted a distraction.”

“What does that mean?”

Sylvain laughs and it sounds like it hurts.

“We used to do this all the time, you remember? We’d stay the night at each others houses. We had places to sleep but you’d crawl inside my bed. I’d crawl inside of yours. We’d snuggle up together. I slept better after that. I slept my best beside you.”

The center of Felix’s chest burns bright like lightning and he swallows down a thousand other words in his throat just to whisper, “I remember.”

“I guess I missed that.”

“When did you stop?” Felix asks, the question falling out of him so thoughtlessly, so easy. “Was it when you started… that?”

They don’t need to reiterate what ‘that’ is.

Sylvain rolls his eyes and makes a sad sort of laugh. The levity curls Felix’s toes. It makes his insides twist and he fights back all manner of violent impulses.

“Something like that.”

“Why don’t you value yourself?” says Felix, squeezing his slit open fingers in anger. “You throw yourself at women… sometimes at men too. You hurt yourself. You struggle to manage the slightest sincerity. What happened to you?”

The quiet stretches on between them.

“What happened to both of us?” he continues to say, and Sylvain sits back down on the bed.

“We stopped going to each other for help,” says Sylvain. “We stopped climbing into each other’s beds.”

_Maybe starting again wouldn’t be so bad_, Felix thinks.

“Shit,” Sylvain mutters, yanking his chin over his shoulder. “Leaned my hand back on some blood. Let’s get your sheets off the bed so we can wash ‘em in the morning.”

And Felix doesn’t think twice about the act. He lets Sylvain toss the dirtied blanket to the floor. The sheets are next to go and he takes delicate care of the dagger beneath the pillow. Sylvain wraps it up in the sheets for safe keeping. There’s an old forgotten garment that Sylvain comes across in this endeavor and the moment that he holds it up in the light, Felix’s nerves all turn to sparks.

Sylvain pulls it from the pillow, buttons popping open with ease. Blood stains the corner of the collar and the right shoulder blade. He squints with intuition, with knowing.

He asks a pointless question: “is this… mine?”

Felix doesn’t see a reason to lie. “It was.”

“Was?”

“When someone else has owned it for this long it’s a bit silly to claim ownership.”

Oh, Sylvain knows what Felix is doing already. Before Sylvain can prod further, Felix clicks his tongue, running his fingers through his hair and spits, “you never noticed it missing.”

“So, you’re admitting this used to be mine.”

Felix grimaces.

“Can you please just let it go?”

His voice croaks out of him with a desperation Sylvain does not seem sympathetic to. Instead, Sylvain shifts on the bed to glance back at Felix devilishly and fixes him with a terrible wink that makes Felix feel slimy inside.

“I wonder what you did with this? Could it be… you missed having me in your bed with you all these years?”

“Shut up,” Felix says; Sylvain begins to unbutton his pajama top. “What are you _doing_!?”

The blouse is too small for him. The blouse is littered in blood. The blouse is now being worn by Sylvain’s warm body and Felix is flattening his lower back to the desk where his lamp is running low.

Sylvain poses, bare chest out. It strains around what are now muscles. The dainty white material’s become see-through and there’s no hope of buttoning it in the front. It looks even more hopeless than one of Raphael’s blouses.

Still, Felix ogles the lightplay against Sylvain’s body. It really isn’t fair, how he’s gotten taller, leaner, _scarily hot._

“It probably doesn’t smell like me anymore after all this time. I’m renewing it for you.”

The grinding of Felix’s teeth threaten to inspire a migraine.

“_Stop that_, just take it off and throw it out or something.”

“Awww, your face is beet red.”

His heart is beating a million miles a minute. Felix gives a scowl, hiding it behind a fist as he turns his face away. His bloody fingers hurt. There’s no escaping this. He can’t explain the shirt away. He can’t invent a purpose for it or rid the shame of it from this night. All he can do is pray it goes the hell away.

He’s been in love for this long. It isn’t fair of Sylvain to toy like this—want to sneak in his bed like this, act like they’re children again.

They’re certainly not children anymore.

And yet—“Felix, join me.”

“What?”

Sylvain’s shoved all the bloodied sheets and bedding from the mattress. All that remains is two pillows, a bare bed, and himself. Even the shirt is gone. He cranes a finger toward him in a motion Felix can only describe in two words as ‘come hither.’

“I don’t have time for nonsense.”

“Climb in bed with me, again. We’ll sleep good like always.”

And somehow, Sylvain’s voice still has that good sugar in it. He’s too good at making others feel loved, feel special and shiny and Felix’s always told himself that he’d never fall for that trouble, not when his real life heart is in a downright _affectionate_ place for him.

Disgusting, isn’t it?

It sounds too good to be true and that’s precisely how Felix comes to believe that it is.

“I’m not doing that, Sylvain.”

“Please? And then we can fix your hand up in the morning, or whenever you want.”

Tilting his head like a puppy, like a little boy denied his pudding, Sylvain pats the space beside him.

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Felix swallows hard. His heart feels speared through. His body dangles perpetually on the precipice of knowing he will never be satisfied, not with being denied or by being loved by him.

Felix approaches the bed, proof enough of his consideration despite the words that he says: “do you think it’s really that easy?”

“Is what really that easy?”

“Just… going back to that kind of thing?”

“Cuddling?” Sylvain says, laughing like they’re ten. “Sharing a bed?”

“That,” reaffirms Felix.

“You think too much,” Sylvain says with a satiny sort of smile. “Just move it over here.”

Felix tucks a strand of indigo behind his ear. He lowers his body to the bed with his knees first. He watches as Sylvain backs himself up, eyes tentatively scanning Felix for… something. The rough feel of the mattress without the sheet over top is new yet not unpleasant. Felix closes his eyes. He sockets his injured hand beneath the pillow he’s lying upon. Much of the pain’s subsided by now, or is overridden by sheer adrenaline and anxiety. This consistent pressure feels good though. Unsure of what to do with the rest of him, Felix lies still and like the dead.

Sylvain snakes his arms in and around, bridging the gap between them and sighing a pleasant sound.

“That’s good.”

Not a word comes out of Felix. Slotting his face right into Felix’s neck, Sylvain nuzzles the spot and Felix can’t help the way that he feels. The sensation he’s sure other people call ‘butterflies’ is upon him. A stirring occurs between his legs. It’s embarrassing. It’s teenage of him. All Sylvain has done is breathe upon his neck slow, press their bodies close, warm each other up. Nothing sensual about that.

It’s measured and innocent enough, Felix taking Sylvain’s knee between his legs. It’s just a conservation of space. It’s what they’d done when they were young to keep them both on the bed. It seems different now somehow. Felix controls his breathing so as to appear _normal_.

It’s unfair of him. It’s not proper of him to get these sensations, and Felix typically gives little shit about being proper at all. It’s a kind of dishonesty, maybe.

_“We’re friends, aren’t we?”_

Sylvain had said that. Felix trembles as his friend makes the motif of his face known against the front of his throat, coasts his digits along the planes of his body with homeliness, _coziness_, pretzels their legs together until Felix feels mounting pressure between the two of them in places he’s trying to ignore.

This is wrong. Felix licks his lips. He pleads for sleep.

“Say, Felix?”

Never a good sign. Felix rustles, as though he’d been on the fringe of sleep. “What?”

“You’re allowed to say no,” he says in a fruitier voice, “but can I kiss you?”

The question’s so quiet, so whispered into his jaw that Felix can almost pretend he’s not heard it. Felix sighs. It’s the first reaction that rushes out of him, involuntary and sudden and honest.

“Yeah,” answers Felix, halfway ashamed at how nimbly he’d given up; Sylvain kisses him suddenly, fervently and that shame melts off him.

Just how badly had he wanted that? Had he felt the same way? Felix opens his eyes to gauge him only to find the oil in the lamp’s run out. Somehow, Felix opens himself up.

Having never kissed someone before, Felix can’t say what’s ‘good.’ All he knows is what feels like heaven touching earth and it feels like Sylvain’s mouth making patterns against his. Felix tries to learn on the go, reacting rather than leading. It isn’t his style but when Sylvain is manhandling his hips, nudging his leg where Felix is burning, he loses track quickly of what he wants and how to get it.

God, he wants Sylvain. He wants more of him. How long has he taken glimpses of his sun-soaked smile on the training grounds, the tan in his cheeks, the spots on his shoulders and wished he’d hold his body against his.

Or at least just kiss him. Just don’t stop kissing him.

Soughing in silence, Felix cuts off every noise he makes with a tight clench of his throat. Sylvain sucks the air out of him. He repurposes his efforts to Felix’s neck, finding there’s a nasty little spot where his shoulder connects with it that he can abuse to make Felix lose his mind.

“You can make noises for me.”

Assuredly, Felix will die if he does that. Sylvain nips at the skin and Felix shudders out something sincere and surprised.

“Sh-shut up,” stammers Felix.

“Tells me I’m doing good,” he says and Felix can feel him smirking into his collar. “Is this good for you?”

A hard hand, a brave hand sinks down to cup Felix where he’s aching, pressing up against him and massaging through the cloth. It’s almost too much. It’s the most Felix has ever had. The motion grows slower and slower until Sylvain’s voice drops its tone.

“Is this okay?” he asks again, this time as though he’s asking for consent and Felix nods wordlessly, strings of hair bobbing back and forth, clenching his bloody fist beneath his head all the while.

Felix bites into the meat of his lip, begging himself not to come so soon. It’s just… too much of what he’s wanted for too much of his life. Sylvain groans into his ear, grinding himself up against Felix. They harden as their hips bump and slide. He hasn’t even been touched directly. Sylvain’s breath is picking up and Felix hates what it does to him, hates the knowledge that Sylvain’s voice, the way he’s hissing in his throat at the pleasure is steadily turning him delirious.

It’s proof enough of his love, isn’t it? The way his heart squeezes and bleeds over when Sylvain moans an unsubtle ‘_fuck_’ into his collar and it makes him rock against him harder.

Both of his hands now link behind Sylvain’s neck. “Goddammit, _Sylvain, you’re—_”

Their lips find each other again and Felix can’t figure out who brought them together. Like two parts of the same being, they find each other again and again without warning and Felix finds himself at the end with him.

Felix thinks that it’s embarrassing, the way his voice goes high when he comes, or the way he rolls his eyes back. He thinks it’s probably weird of him, how he can’t keep himself still, how he has to cling to Sylvain with his entire body the moment that he reaches infinity until Sylvain can’t possibly continue to slide up against him. They both stutter into each other, and Felix doesn’t even know if Sylvain came too but he doesn’t seem to say anything about it.

Coughing up the breath he’d been holding, or what was left of it after the rest was ripped out of him bit by bit in the time between, Felix shifts against the bed. His bottoms are a mess. Sylvain’s might just be the same.

His fingers… hurt. He tries to move them to no avail. They’re tired and hurt, stuck together with blood. They both catch their breath and Sylvain starts to laugh. Felix can’t even question why. It’s just so beautiful to listen to.

“I’ve never felt that good before.”

Such a confession feels too good to be real. Felix feels open in a way he’s never felt. He can’t think it’s fake. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it is, anyways.

“I’ve… never done this,” Felix admits.

“Whoa,” sighs out Sylvain, almost in annoyance if not for how exhausted he sounds. “You didn’t tell me that I’d be your—”

“I’m fine with it,” Felix says and they both go quiet for a time.

Blinking back sweat, Felix runs his fingers (the healthy ones) back through his hair, finding how it’s plastered to his neck and shoulders. “Why was this the best you’ve had?” he thinks to ask.

Panting passes between them. There doesn’t seem to be a rush to answer.

“I might love you,” Sylvain says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, like it doesn’t destroy him to consider. “That’s… a scary thought.”

He laughs again.

Felix hates how his chest constricts at the sound.

“No, it’s not.”

Sylvain’s hand finds Felix’s, sliding through his hair and running the flat of his thumbprint against Felix’s knuckles. The sticky air, the sweat, the sex fog between them… Felix thought it’d be disgusting. Sylvain’s wet, gross hand is comforting. It’s the greatest reassurance he’s had in a long time.

“Don’t you think that’s… a little cliche?” Sylvain asks.

Squinting, Felix closes his hand a little tighter around Sylvain’s own. “What is?”

“That the person I love is, I don’t know… someone that was there all along.”

Felix frowns. “Is that cliche?” he says. “Maybe it just makes sense.”

“Maybe,” says Sylvain. “How long did you have a crush on me?”

“Since we were kids,” Felix spills, figuring there’s no use in playing coy now. “I don’t know what it was.”

Felix focuses his eyes hard on Sylvain. They’ve adjusted to the dark and he’s treated to a special sight too many have seen: Sylvain, hair mussed up, sweaty bits sticking to his cheek and his forehead is slick with it, his pupils wide and dilated, his smile airy and sparkling in the remnants of starlight, just everything about him… perfect.

Quivering, Felix says, “it was just you.”

Sylvain kisses him again, planting his eyebrows up against Felix’s. “Let me crawl into your bed again, whenever I want. I can make you feel like this every night.”

Steadying his heartbeat with as much strength as he can muster, Felix scoffs, defanged.

“Only if I’m the only bed. You can’t manage that.”

“Hey,” Sylvain whines. “You don’t know that.”

“You can prove that,” Felix says like a challenge.

Sylvain kisses him once more, pecking Felix’s cheek almost like an apology. For what, Felix isn’t sure.

“I can,” he says and Felix might just believe him.


End file.
